you so worried?” Lanny laughs, looking over her shoulder. “It’s not like we’re terrorists or trying to smuggle black-market cigarettes over the border. We’re just nice American citizens going to Canada for lunch.”
“No, we’re not,” Luke says, but he is laughing, too, in relief. “Sorry, I’m not used to this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. I know you’re not. You did great.” She squeezes his hand.
They stop at a motel on the outskirts of Baker Lake, a nondescript place, not part of a chain. Luke waits in the car while Lanny is in the office. He watches her chat up the older gentleman behind the counter, who moves slowly, stretching out his one chance that morning to speak to a pretty young girl. Lanny climbs back into the SUV and they drive around to a unit in back, overlooking a stretch of trees and the tail end of a neighborhood baseball field. Theirs is the only vehicle in the parking lot.
Once inside the hotel room, Lanny is a blur of activity, unpacking her bag, checking out the bathroom, complaining about the quality of the towels. Luke sits on the bed, suddenly too tired to remain upright. He lies down on top of the polyester bedspread, staring up at the ceiling. His surroundings spin like a carnival ride.
“What’s the matter?” Lanny sits next to him on the edge of the bed, touches his forehead.
“Exhaustion, I guess. On the midnight shift, I usually go to bed as soon as I get home.”
“Then go ahead, take a nap.” She eases the doctor’s shoes off without untying the laces.
“No, I should head back. It’s only a half hour away,” he protests but doesn’t move. “I have to return the car…”
“Nonsense. Besides, it will only arouse suspicion at the border station, turning right around and going home like that.” She spreads a blanket over him, then digs around in her suitcase and pulls out a Ziploc bag filled with the most voluptuous marijuana buds Luke has ever seen.
In less than a minute, she expertly rolls a generous doobie, lights it up, and takes a long, greedy hit. She closes her eyes as she exhales and her face relaxes with satisfaction. Luke thinks that he would like to bring such a look to this woman’s face sometime.
Lanny holds the joint out to him. After a second’s hesitation, Luke takes it, brings it to his lips. He inhales and holds the smoke, feels it spread into the lobes of his brain, feels his ears clog and stop up. Sweet Jesus, this stuff is potent. Fast.
He coughs and hands the joint back to Lanny. “I haven’t done that in a while. Where’d you get that stuff?”
“In town. St. Andrew.” Her answer both faintly alarms and surprises him, reminds him that there are other unseen worlds that exist right under his nose. He’s just glad he didn’t know she was holding when they crossed the border or he would have been even more nervous.
“You do this kind of thing a lot?” He nods at the joint.
“Couldn’t get by without it. You don’t know the memories I carry around in my head… Lifetime after lifetime of things you regret doing… things you’ve seen other people do. Stuff you can’t get away from-without this.” She regards the spliff in her hand. “There are times when I’ve wished I could knock myself out for, say, a decade. Go to sleep, make it all stop. No way to erase the bad memories. It’s not
“Like the man in the morgue-”
She presses a finger to Luke’s mouth to keep him from saying another word. Time enough for that later, he imagines; in fact, she has nothing but time stretching out before her to realize the irreversible thing she has done to her true love. Not enough pot in all the world to wash that away. Hell on earth.
The things he’s done seem small in comparison. Still, he reaches for the joint.
“I’m going back,” he says, as though he has to convince her. “As soon as I take a nap. It’ll be safer driving if I take a nap. But I have to get back… things to do, waiting for me… Peter’s car…”
“Sure,” she says.
When the doctor wakes, the hotel room is bathed in gray. The sun is setting but none of the lamps has been turned on. Luke lies still, not sitting up, trying to get his bearings. For a long minute, his head is stuffed with cotton, and he can’t remember where he is and why everything is unfamiliar. He’s hot and sweaty from lying under the blanket and feels like a kidnapping victim rushed out of a car, blindfolded, spun around.
Slowly, the room comes into focus. The stranger is sitting in one of the hard wooden chairs at the table, looking out the window. She sits absolutely still.
“Hey,” Luke says, to let her know he’s awake.
“Feeling better? Let me get you a glass of water.” She rises from the chair and hurries through a doorway to the kitchenette. “It’s only tap water. I put some in the refrigerator to get cold.”
“How long have I been asleep?” Luke reaches for the glass; it feels deliciously cold, and he’s tempted to press it to his forehead. He’s burning up.
“Four, five hours.”
“Oh Christ, I’d better get on the road. They’ll be looking for me, if they aren’t already.” He pushes the blanket back, and sits up on the edge of the bed.
“What’s the rush? You said there’s no one at home to wait for you,” the girl replies. “Besides, you don’t look well. That shit might have been too much for you. It’s strong. Maybe you should lie down for a little longer.”
Lanny retrieves her laptop from the chipped veneered chest of drawers and walks over to him. “I downloaded these from the camera while you were asleep. I thought you would like to see him. I mean, I know you’ve
Luke winces at this macabre little speech, not happy to be reminded of the dead body in the morgue and its relation to Lanny, but accepts the laptop when she hands it to him. The images jump off the screen brightly in the dusky darkness of the room: it is the man in the body bag but there is no comparison. Here he is, vividly alive, vibrant and whole. The eyes, the face animated, electrified with life.
And he is so, so beautiful, the sight of him makes Luke strangely sad. The first picture must have been taken in a car, window down, his longish black hair swirling about his head and his eyes crinkled as he laughs at the woman taking the picture, laughs at something Lanny has said or done. In the next picture, he is in bed, the bed they must have shared at Dunratty’s, his head on a white pillow, again his hair falling over his face, lashes brushing his cheeks, the perfect blush of pink across the high ridge of his cheekbone. A glimpse of throat and the protruding knob of a collarbone are visible beneath a creamy white fold of sheet.
After a minute, looking from picture to picture, it occurs to Luke that the beautiful thing about the man in the photos is not the pleasing quality of his face. It’s not his handsomeness. It’s something in his expression, an interplay between the delight in his eyes and the smile on his face. It’s that he’s happy to be with the person holding the camera and taking the pictures.
A lump forms in Luke’s throat and he thrusts the laptop at Lanny. He doesn’t want to look anymore.
“I know,” the girl says, also choked up, giving in to tears. “It kills me to think he’s gone. Forever gone. I feel his absence like a hole in my chest. A feeling I have carried with me for two hundred years has been ripped away. I don’t know how I will go on. That’s why I am asking you… please stay with me a little longer. I can’t be alone. I’ll go out of my mind.” She puts the laptop on the floor, then reaches for Luke’s hand. Hers is tiny and warm in his. The palm is damp, but Luke can’t tell if the dampness is his or hers.
“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for me,” she says as she looks through his eyes and into him, as though she can see what is swimming inside him. “I’ve-I’ve never-I mean, no one has ever been so good to me. Taken a risk like that for me.”
Suddenly, her mouth is on his. He closes his eyes and sinks his entire being into the warm wetness of her mouth. He falls backward into the spot on the bed he had just left, her nearly insubstantial weight falling on him, and he feels a part of him tear in two. He is horrified by what he is doing, yet he’s wanted to do this from the moment he first saw her. He’s not going back to St. Andrew, not yet anyway; he’s going to follow her-how can he walk away? Her need for him is like a hook planted in his chest, pulling him along effortlessly, and he cannot resist. He is diving off a cliff into black water; he can’t see what’s waiting below for him, but he knows there’s not a force on earth that can stop him.
TWENTY-SIX